shit sandwich with the crusts cut off --part two

It didn't seem like that big of a deal to find someone to talk about what the storm had done to the stage. All that was needed was about ten minutes with someone saying, "Well, it was pretty fucked up right here and right here, but we all pulled together and..."

No one would ever call this a think piece. It was straight up filler.

To get the ball rolling, I called the number I'd been given, explained what who I was and what I was coming to do.

"That's no problem," the voice on the other side said then added, "but I'm not overseeing that. Let me get your number and I'll have someone call you."

My stomach made a quick bow knot. I didn't like being handed off, not on the day of the show.

The call came about an hour later. A chipper woman told me she'd heard I wanted to do a piece on the stage. We talked for a minute. She gave me the name of the producer and asked if I wanted to talk to him on the phone or in person.

"I'm headed down today," I said. "I'd love to just talk to him for a couple of minutes before the show."

I promised to stay the hell out of the way.

"Hmm," she said. "He's really busy today with the show."

"Just a couple of minutes," I repeated. "Real easy stuff."

She committed to nothing in particular, but said, "I've got to send you some paperwork for you to get your credentials for photos and stuff."

Credentials? I already had credentials and I wasn't bringing a photographer.

"Uh, OK."

The rep got my email address and told me to reply just as soon as I'd read the terms, conditions and instructions.

A few minutes later, a two page document arrived in my "in" box. It told me to turn onto Old Powell Road where there'd be a media tent. There was information about parking, about getting into the show and oddly, about meeting and photographing the performers. There was also a note about locking my gear up in the car while I was in the concert.

I yelled over a the city desk, explaining that I'd just received a lot more than I expected.

"I think with this I can take pictures of Toby Keith."

I didn't have a photographer, but I did have a cheap, point and click in the car. I am not good with a camera.

My editor just looked at me.

"Just say thanks, Bill." 

So I told her I'd received the packet, reminded her about the show producer and promised I'd see her in a few hours.

I left mid-afternoon, thinking this could be pretty cool. There was a certain amount of drama here. The Greenbrier had brought in a major act (Keith) and a former major act (Lionel Richie). Keith was red-meat mainstream country music, a guy with a bouquet of flag-waving country songs and an unrepentant corporate shill, but... he's also strangely authentic.

Toby Keith is probably the closest thing to a modern-day Waylon Jennings there is.

People forget that people don't go into pop (country) music because they're looking for pure artistic expression, because they want to speak to the hopes, dreams and despairs of the average person. Nah, they want to get rich. Finding a way to speak to those hopes, dreams and despairs in a way that's novel to the average person is just the way to do it. 

Waylon was a corporate shill, too. People forget but, arguably, his biggest hit wasn't any of the outlaw country stuff, but that theme song to a CBS television show --you know the one.

"Just some good ol boys..."

You wouldn't believe how many contemporary country singers have cited that song as major inspiration for going into country music in the first place. It kind of boggles the mind.


Anyway, Richie was the weird side dish on the menu. He'd done a well-received country record, but I didn't see much indication that he was touring as a serious country act. He was straight up Motown funk, soul and 80s pop.

My high school band director, I remembered, had a huge woody for the guy. We must have played half his catalog in the three or four years I was part of the marching band.

Hell, I liked him. Like everyone at the time, I had the "Dancing on the Ceiling" record.

I thought chicks would dig me if I listened to sensitive pop music.

Nope.

It was an odd pairing, but not impossible. The 80s have never gone out of style in West Virginia. Mountain Stage could probably sell out the Culture Center simply by hosting reunion shows with people like Flock of Seagulls or Simple Minds.

This is not a suggestion.

Anyway, I was fascinated with how the whole Toby Keith, 'Good ol boy' on the Fourth of July with special guest aging-former-hit-maker-turned-Cherokee-casino-regular Lionel Richie might play out with this crowd --plus backstage, the hustle, the bustle, people serious about getting shit done on the Fourth, while a lot of people were watching. It seemed like an awesome opportunity and a great setting for my interview with the producer, who might just be distracted enough by all his responsibilities and concerns to be honest.

I could hardly wait to get there and... I'd been brainwashed. For days, maybe weeks, I'd heard about the media room, the media tent for the Greenbrier. I'd heard they kept it well larded and well-stocked. Dreams of fried green tomato sandwiches, sweet potato fries and cold bottled beer danced in my head.

After a couple of days of sweating at home with no power, living off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as well as choking down overstuffed ravioli straight from the can, the mere hint of properly prepared meals and ice cold, tasty beverages was like the promise of sexual favors and free HBO.

It seemed magical. 

My entire plan was I'd do the interview, catch the show then write about it at my leisure in the media tent while everybody piled out during the fireworks at the end of the show. Traffic would be snarled for at least an hour, which was plenty of time for a review --not that there was a big hurry to get it turned in.

After that, we'd see. Maybe I'd find a place to crash --I'd been told we had a room somewhere --or maybe I'd drive home and finish the other assignment back at the office.

Time was completely on my side.

shit sandwich with the crusts cut off -part one

The assignment was straightforward: go to the Greenbrier, watch the concert, write about what I saw. But just going to the show was a huge investment of time: two hours down, two hours back. I'd bill for mileage.

My editors wanted a second story out of me, which seemed fair, and we agreed I'd talk to some of the people who'd helped put the concert series together about dealing with the aftermath of a series of storms which had blown through a few days before. Thousands were still without power --yours truly, included --and the Greenbrier golf course had sustained damage. The wind uprooted trees, downed lines and made a huge mess of things, which was a problem with the PGA coming to town.

But a couple of hundred volunteers lent a hand. They cut trees, dragged debris, raked and swept and restored the course in not much more than a day. It was a feel good kind of event --ordinary people pulling together to help millionaire athletes play a televised game at the state's most posh resort --uniting for the common good.

Repairing a stage, on the other hand, seemed more complicated. Dealing with sound and light would tend to require more technical knowledge than how to hold a chainsaw.

We agreed this was a pretty good story for me to do.

But there were problems right off. Something was up at The Greenbrier with getting my credentials. Weeks before, my name had been part of a list submitted for press badges. The badges came in a week before the Greenbrier Classic --mine was not among them.

An oversight. Not a big deal. The sports guy overseeing our coverage said he'd already talked to someone at the resort. They were sending it.

A few days passed, he said he wasn't sure what happened, but they were supposed to be sending it. He told me he'd check.

Still nothing.

Calls were made. Assurances given and my press badge was going to be FedExed, then they said a courier would bring it to us. Neither happened, then the storm hit and I began to think I wasn't going anywhere, which didn't seem like such a bad thing. Power at my house was out and my planned interview with Lionel Richie had tanked. His publicity people had gone from being encouraging to being evasive.

They'd been proper passive aggressive assholes about the whole thing, stopped returning e-mails and phone calls and really just refused to give an answer.

Finally, another reporter brought the badge back from The Greenbrier after she'd gone down to do an advance story. It arrived the night before I was supposed to leave.

Just to be on the safe side, I was given a contact name and number.

"If you have any trouble, give them a call."

July 4

Happy 4th of July.
Blogging will resume once the power kicks back on. Otherwise, I guess I'm back to leaving cryptic political and vaguely sexual messages in restrooms.

Scene for a roadside death

A short woman sat on the guard rail sobbing; her face as bright as a raspberry. Leaning forward, gasping for air, her swollen, over-ripe breasts were just shy of tumbling out of her nearly invisible bikini top.

She probably shouldn't have worn the swimsuit in the first place. She wasn't a small woman and later on, the details of the afternoon might come back to her in electrified flashes --but she didn't mind be stared at. Men like curvy women and what was wrong with liking being stared at on a sunny day by the river? Why not be looked at? What was wrong with feeling warm all the way through?

The woman's hair was wet and hung down the sides of her head, flat and oily. A friend, a sister maybe, had an arm latched around her shoulder. She held her stiffly, even fearfully, as the woman gasped out of grief and horror. The friend, the other woman, her face grim and ashen, her head turned away, mumbled something like prayers: things of no use to the living, things that could not be heard by the drowned.

A small crowd clumped around them, some, like the women, perched on the guard rail, near their vehicles. A few milled around in a schizophrenic shuffle; rocking one step here then one step there but never really going anywhere.

This was just the waiting around for news already lying on the doorstep.

The deliverers of that message, a small army of uniformed professionals, waited in the wings. They stood by polished, red trucks, leaned out the door of predatory police cruisers and watched with curiosity the drama unfolding without their help. They're only apparent purpose, the bulk of them, seemed to be to  separate the crowd of family and friends, soon to be mourners, from those working unseen, underwater, looking for a body.

Feed your face, feed your soul

Growing up, I remember going to my grandparents' homes and really being overwhelmed by their kitchens. On my father's side, my grandmother kept a refrigerator full of deli lunch meat, cheese, soda and snacks (not much on the veggies, however). Her cupboards always had cookies and chips and crackers.

My mother's mom had a fully stocked refrigerator, two huge chest freezers, a second old-style ice box fridge and a pantry --plus a smokehouse out back. You could always find a gallon of ice cream somewhere, plus just about anything else. Granny could feed an army and occasionally did --particularly around the holidays.

We ate like kings when we visited my grandparents. 

My folks stocked up much more modestly. We had plenty to eat, but Dad quit smoking and became a health nut, a manic long distance runner and a crazed gardener. Somehow, he talked my mother into canning tomatoes, corn and grapes and baking loaf after loaf of zucchini bread --I don't think it was her idea.

We had lots of that stuff, but not no much cheese; no crackers, usually, except saltines and cookies were something we saw sporadically at best.

Later on, after my folks split, things got a little tighter. Mom started buying the good cereal instead of just Raisin Bran, but there wasn't the sense of plenty we'd had before. However, even so, it was still a lot more than what I became used to as an adult.


In the dark, dark days, I remember getting by on cheap bags of black beans and medium grain rice. Sometimes, I'd buy cans of Mexican salsa to pour over it, to give it flavor. Other times, I'd get bottles of salad dressing with Arabic labels.

Whatever was less than a dollar.

Sometimes, the only thing in my refrigerator when I opened that door was my shadow and that scared me.  I worried about not having enough, but really, truthfully, I was never remotely close to going hungry --at least not for very long. There were times I felt like it was close, but I always had the beans and rice. I had friends willing to feed me from time to time and my mother lived just 30 miles away.

But I also had my pride and I kept my mouth shut about it. Most times, nobody knew how I was living or that I was just squeaking by. 

Still, when I panic about money, when I worry about how I'm going to get through a month, it always comes back to having enough to eat. The rest can be managed. Utility companies and lenders can be negotiated with. You can beg them to cut you a break, forgive some of the extra fees and charges; buy yourself a little time. If the worst happens, you can go to bed when the light fades and wash up in the employee restroom. You can catch a ride to and from work. It's only temporary.

Food is different. Everybody has to eat and you cannot negotiate with your stomach. It holds you hostage. The best you can do is trim back. When you're a little short, instead of the apples, you get the bananas because apples are $1.69 a pound and bananas are only 55 cents a pound --or you can buy jello. If you're a lot short, stick with the beans then raid the condiment packages left in the fridge at work to make another bowl of pintos seem palatable.

Most of the time no one even notices they're gone.


The fear creeps in when you're not sure if you can afford the beans and I've seen that. It's left a mark on me. I've probably written more about being afraid of going hungry as much as anything.

So, while I was planning my garden, I did something else: I bought shelves, nothing special, just inexpensive, but sturdy shelves. I also began collected canning jars and I started turning a little nothing space without much use otherwise into a pantry.

It's nothing special. Every time I go to the grocery store, I pick up a couple of extra cans of something, a box of this or that. I put it on the shelf. So far, it hasn't come to much --just a dozen or so cans, a couple of boxes of pasta, some powdered milk, two or three pounds of dried beans, a few packages of noodles and a 12 pack of diet soda. It's enough for a couple of days, but my stock will grow and I take nothing from those shelves unless I replace it with something new.

Every once in a while, I go to this little room in my house, just to look at it. I think about what else I should add. Canned meat has come to mind, but I hate tuna and canned chicken sometimes smells like cat food. There should be spices and tea, loads of things, but there's not a terrible hurry. The shelves are filling up slowly, but surely.

These days, I'm not so worried about where my next meal is going to come from or what form it will take. With this little gesture on my part, maybe I never have to worry again. If so, that's kind of a comfort --and one that's long overdue.   

Green Acre: Seeds from the slacker 2

I never got a tiller, never was even able to borrow one for an afternoon. A friend of a friend offered to bring his and come cut up the ground for me, but his schedule never coincided with mine or the weather's. The weeks dragged on, but I was already working on planting.

I started hitting the flea market in February, looking for a shovel, a rake and a hoe --these seemed to be the minimum I'd just to plant something.Winter was mild and I was antsy to do something with my hands.

The only patch of ground that looked remotely likely for being something I could work without a tiller was a strange square protected by a rusted and sagging fence.It reminded me of a pet cemetery, forlorn and half forgotten, a place where countless goldfish of another generation had been laid to rest along with a couple of good dogs and maybe a cat.

The soil was dark, but the whole patch was overrun with poke weed. It looked deliberate, like the previous owner had planted the stuff, but nobody does that. In all likelihood, the land had been prepared, but never used. The old man's wife had become ill. The whole house is a living document to her decline, with little changes made to accommodate her growing frailty and immobility.

Birds probably took the land over. They'd brought the seeds and weed the weed had thrived unchecked.

I decided I could make my stand here or at least try.

I got a shovel and a pickaxe from my mother's basement; the same tools my father had used to dig and maintain his garden when I was a boy. I remember watching him and being part of the whole excavation of the lower quarter acre. He'd used the pick axe to pry out rocks, some of which had become part of the low stone wall at the bottom of the yard.

Pieces of that wall still remain, but not many.

The garden patch was worse than I imagined. The poke weed had grown deep. I spent half a day pulling up dessicated stalks and cutting and digging up swollen roots that looked very healthy. I pulled out chunks the size of basketballs and tossed them in a stinking pile on the other side of the fence. I filled something like ten leaf bags full of debris from the plot not much bigger than a couple of parking spaces.

I was a little too pleased with the job and on a whim decided to go ahead and plant a couple of rows of greens, carrots and some beets.

My father suggested I hold off, but he lives about an hour or so from Canada. His winter and growing season are very different than West Virginia.

I'd already started tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in little peat pellets indoors. What would be the harm to go ahead and try to get an early jump on things?

The back of the packages swore they'd grow in the cold, that they loved the cold and I hoped they were right. To be honest, I was kind of counting on them getting a head start on the weeds. The weeds would return. All the books said they would and when the new plants grew, I wouldn't know which was which. I had no idea what spinach or lettuce or beets looked like when they first came out of the ground.

I hoped it would all turn into something I recognized before I yanked them out of the ground.

Turn on, tune in.

I started attending church, mostly, because my girlfriend attends regularly and it's a nice place to see her. She dresses up for services and I love the way she looks at me as I come through the door --occasionally late. What I like is she never completely expects me to be there, but is glad I showed up just the same.

She's been attending the same church for as long as she can remember and probably before. My attendance at church prior to the past few months might be considered spotty at best. Oh sure, I was the vice president or secretary or something for a Methodist church youth group in high school --but I was mostly recruited, I think, to help mow the cemetery plot the group maintained.

I never joined the church, just attended youth group meetings and went to services maybe three times in two years.

I also became a member of the Southern Baptist congregation about a dozen years back. At the time I was in emotional free-fall. A friend suggested I come along with him to church and I was desperate enough to give it a try. The message was soft-soap Christianity with a heavy dose of general counseling --plus they served donuts in the morning. As I was broke and hungry almost every weekend, the donuts were kind of nice. I always had two --even if they were invariably stale.

With the Baptists, I was good up until the pastor actually delved into the nuts and bolts of the religion. The preacher and I exchanged many e-mails on why I didn't agree with the contents of his sermon either on Biblical grounds or because it just sounded like thinly veiled political bullshit.

Periodically, he would tell me I should have been a preacher, too. I don't know that he really meant that, but may have been looking for a way to shut me up.

I was never a very good Christian. This isn't to say I was out looting and plundering or sacrificing goats to obscure Byzantine gods on the side. I lived a pretty good Christian life. I prayed a couple of times a day. I attended every service I could. I read my Bible and whatever was considered the hot new religious text of the moment --"The Prayer of Jabez" was popular, as was stuff by Rick Warren. I watched Kirk Cameron in "Left Behind" and was sober --at least the first time through.

The second time, I realized it was too damned silly to take seriously without something to help suspend disbelief.

Quite frankly, I think the rapture is bullshit and about as likely as the world ending because of the return of a flying winged serpent.  

Anyway, I walked the walk --at least as best I understood it. I tried to live by what I read and what I was taught in church. I believed, but then the belief system I'd established was challenged and my faith collapsed like an empty aluminum crushed against a frat boy's forehead.

I was never a really good Christian, I guess. When the real trials showed up, my belief in a benevolent god withered. As much as preachers and pundits talked up the idea of spiritual trials, I could never wrap my head around what was served by making even one child autistic or blind or born with a broken heart.


So, I began to look elsewhere. I wound up reading a lot about Buddhism and a few self-help-y new age books (just not the stupid ones that promised to connect me with dead people, put me in contact with my guardian angel or help me decipher my fate from water). I even called myself a Buddhist for a while, not that I really was.

I liked the idea of letting go of attachment and the notion of responsibility in Buddhism wss very attractive to me. Part of what I didn't like about Christianity is that there was a vein in it that tended to turn everything over to God, including the stupid things people do just because they can, like screw each other for money or dump poison in the water. 

I liked Buddhism's pretty specific, though very broad, code of conduct, but the concept of reincarnation sort of stalled for me, as did the complicated system for determining karmic merit. It seems unlikely that the universe was created by an accountant.

I'm not entirely sure the Buddha believed that either.

I've been hot and cold on religion. These days, I think, I'm moving toward warm. It's been a while, but I'm interested in spiritual things again. 

Attending church is odd for me. I'm not really there for the message, though the man giving the sermon is a nice, earnest and plain-spoken kind of preacher named Mike. Earnest counts a lot in my world. I appreciate having an honest intention and Mike seems like he's in this for all the right reasons. Of course, he also reminds me ever so slightly of Glenn Beck, but without seeming like he drinks gasoline straight from the pump.


Mike is also smart enough to know I'm there for the girl, not for the guy he's talking about. There are times I feel a little bad about that. It's a very nice church. The people are thoughtful, sweet and kind --just very decent people who don't seem to do a lot of grandstanding or chest thumping about how swell they are because they're Christians. I feel a real sense of humility in the bunch as a group.

They're warm and welcoming, but I'm an "other," a visitor, a tourist and an alien. It's not them, of course. It's me. I hear the words, but they don't really move me. I feel nothing much beyond the warmth of my girlfriend's hand and the joy from watching her smile at me, but I wait to see if there's anything else. I never stop hoping there is.